Winding machines for winding packages of textile strand are old in the art and customarily may include a spindle on which a supporting package is mounted for free rotation by means of a drive roll adapted to engage the surface of the support and thereafter the main body of strand wound thereon so as to rotate the same. A traversing means including a guide for reciprocating the strand material axially of the support to wind the main body of yarn are also included. In the formation of such packages it is useful to provide a tailing end, i.e., a plurality of circumferential wraps of strand about one end of the package support outboard of the main body of strand formed thereon. The tailing end serves to provide a free unentangled length of strand which may be tied to a running length of strand or to another package in a creel as may be required in processing the strand. In this regard it is helpful that a predetermined length of tailing end be available for such tying operations.
Heretobefore the formation of a measured or minimum length of tailing end was generally accomplished by the correlation of strand speed with a mechanism to produce a time delay in which the required number of wraps may be made around the package support prior to the strand being caught by the guide of the traverse means for winding the main body of strand. Known devices based on this concept rely on precise timing and accordingly require either highly sophisticated expensive timing devices or produce tailing ends of undesirable varying lengths from package to package. Such devices have also been combined with a smooth conical tailing hub to better space the individual laps of the tailing end prior to winding of the main body of strand however inherent slippage across the hub enables spacing variations to occur.